Paradise City

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “What did the fire cost?” Rossi asked. “Both money and time.”

  “There was a little bit over half a million in pure down in the basement,” Silvestri said, wiping a line of sweat from his forehead with two fingers of his right hand. “Totals out to at least five times that on the street. The suppliers on the other end are going to have to wait no more than two days before we get a fresh batch in their hands. Should be business as usual by Thursday.”

  “Except the operation will still be three million short,” Rossi said, his voice calm, the high level of his anger apparent only in his tense demeanor. “All because one, that’s right, one cop knows where to hit and when. He’s got somebody close to me feeding him and that’s a name I need.”

  “He’s hit us in Naples and in New York,” Silvestri said, pulling a cigarette from a half empty pack in his shirt pocket. “And we got nobody out there with knowledge of both ends. The way it’s set up, it’s just not possible. To my eyes anyway.”

  “Then your eyes are very wrong,” Rossi said, standing now, walking with relaxed ease around the edges of the boat, waves lapping at its side. “Or they’re not seeing all that they should. There’s one of ours with lips close to this cop. That person must be found.”

  “I’ll get on it soon as we dock,” Silvestri said, resigned now to putting in motion a task with results that would be all but impossible to achieve.

  The organizational structure of the Camorra was shaped like a giant squid, every tentacle operating independently but each one firmly attached to the large head at the center. This allowed the varied enterprises to run their multibillion-dollar operations without fear of any high-level infiltration. While its Sicilian counterpart in the organized crime hierarchy, the Mafia, had often been brought to the brink of ruin solely on the basis of informants able to share a vast knowledge of their overall methods of doing business, the Camorra historically sustained few such defections. Every member, regardless of rank or status, was fed only the information that enabled him to move the venture he was involved in to its next logical step. This allowed true power to remain in the hands of the reigning don, and the very best of these leaders made it a point to trust no one. Silence was the Camorra’s most valuable weapon. No one had ever managed to infiltrate the top tier of the organization, and Silvestri had serious doubts that Lo Manto, despite his sporadic successes down the years, would be the first.

  “Where are we with the girl?” Rossi asked. He had turned off the engines and dropped anchor, allowing the boat to float over uneasy water three miles from the Long Island shoreline.

  “She found her way to the Metro-North station,” Silvestri said. “It was either too late or she got lucky, but nobody came around asking her for a ticket. Our guys boarded it in time and rode with her into the city.”

  “She try to contact her uncle?” Rossi asked, reaching into an open cooler and pulling out a sweaty bottle of Deer Park water.

  “Not yet,” Silvestri said. “She spent her night on a ticket-holder’s bench in Grand Central. Got up at the start of rush hour and started walking around the terminal.”

  “Our guys still with her?” Rossi took three large gulps, then rested the bottle in an open slot on the side of his chair.

  “They’re pissing and moaning about it,” Silvestri said. “But they’re with her. She hasn’t been out of their sight since she left the house.”

  “And that’s the way it better stay,” Rossi said, pulling the unlit cigarette from Silvestri’s mouth and tossing it over his shoulder and into the water. “And make sure that when we move against her uncle, she’s nowhere in sight. I’m looking for the cop to go down, not the kid.”

  “They’re on her like Elmer’s,” Silvestri said. “She leads, they follow. Or they go down. I couldn’t have made it any clearer.”

  “Once you relay all that, have them report to somebody else,” Rossi told him. “I want you on this cop full-time. Go back in and get into his background. I’m talking beyond what we already have. Grab it from day one.”

  “The profile we got is pretty detailed,” Silvestri said. “It tracks him from his first year in high school. I know more about this badge than I do about my own wife.”

  “We’re missing something,” Rossi insisted. “There has to be a card in this deck we haven’t found. We’re not just another case to this cop. We’re very personal to him, have been from day one. Now, it could all just be about his father. With some people that’s enough, and he might be one of those. But I don’t think so. I think there’s something at play here. The sooner we latch on to what that is, the sooner we pin him to the mat.”

  “You want me to use the info we already have?” Silvestri asked, “or start it all from scratch?”

  “Work off the basics,” Rossi told him, “and then think beyond them. This guy’s a good cop, smart on the street, never makes a move unless he’s standing on sure feet. But there’s lots of guys out there like that. Maybe not in his league, but close. There has to be something he has or knows that gives him that extra tick, makes him anticipate what we do even before we go out there and do it.”

  “That ain’t gonna be all that easy to find,” Silvestri said. “Given that it’s out there to start with.”

  “If it was easy, we would have had it already,” Rossi said, his raspy voice filled with an impatient edge. “The fact we don’t means that it’s buried deep enough to lay hidden from everybody’s line of sight.”

  “I’ll put a call out to Naples,” Silvestri said. “See what we can dig up there. There’ll be somebody, another cop, a friend, maybe even a relative, who can give up more than what we’re already holding.”

  “Put it out there on all levels,” Rossi said. “From street to suite, anybody ever crossed his sight, I want to hear what they have to say.”

  “How close can we get to his family?” Silvestri asked, the implication of his words clear and apparent.

  “We already got his niece,” Rossi said. “You want to touch the sister, that can best be done through her husband. He’s not straight blood, so he might be willing to give up some information in return for knowing his kid’s safe.”

  “What about his mother?” Silvestri said. “What I get from the other side is that they’re close. She doesn’t talk much about her time here and he don’t ask. I think that’s what they both want us to think and see. I bet she knows a lot more than she lets on. It would make sense to try and get close to her.”

  “Do it clean,” Rossi said. “Don’t go to her direct. You can get just as much from the ones in her circle as you probably could out of her mouth. And make sure she doesn’t sniff it out. I don’t want her tipping off her son.”

  “We got another shipment in place to move by midweek,” Silvestri said. “We can put a hold on it a few days, let the waters calm a bit, give us a chance to deal full-out with this cop.”

  “We decide on how we run our business,” Rossi said, his handsome face flushed red from anger and the glare of the sun. “Not some badge chasing our tail. And besides, if he’s on to our every move, he’ll figure something’s not right if we make any changes to our plans. Leave our world as is and plan on rocking his heavy.”

  “He seems awful calm about his niece,” Silvestri said, glancing away from Rossi, his eyes focused on the spray of the waves as they bounced against the side of the boat. “That bothers me. Instead of flipping his informers about our next deals, he should be hounding them about the kid, but he’s not. Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Maybe he’s got eyes on her that we can’t see,” Rossi said. “But even with him, that’s a bit too much to expect. It might be he just doesn’t care. But he’s not cut that way, either.”

  “Which leaves us where?” Silvestri asked.

  “Looking for answers you better find,” Rossi said. “Otherwise, it won’t just be him I’d be planting in the ground.”

  Paula walked slowly through the crowded hall. She stared up at the majestic ceiling of Grand Central
Terminal, taking several moments to marvel at the shapes and designs of the stars and planets, each one seemingly floating on a weight all its own. She was hungry and tired, despite a restful night in the security of the waiting area. More than anything, she was impatient, eager for her plight to come to an end. She brushed strands of hair away from her eyes, ever mindful that she hadn’t washed or showered since she’d escaped from her locked room. She stood off to one side of a large circular information booth, a rush of people closing in, eager to have their questions regarding times and tracks answered by the indifferent attendants sitting behind a safety glass shield, who grudgingly dispensed their knowledge, barely audible without the power of the mike pressed close to their lips. She looked beyond the dashing throng of pedestrians, each desperate to catch a train. She walked toward the dining course at the bottom shell of the terminal, her eyes darting from right to left, seeking out a place to eat.

  The two men in leather jackets and tight jeans watched as she walked past, their arms resting casually on a ticket counter, above them the times and tracks for a long list of arrivals and departures changing as quickly as a stock market ticker. The taller of the two, thick dark hair gelled back, the collar of his black shirt buttoned, a folded morning edition of the New York Post in his right hand, lowered his eyes and shook his head. “You ask me, Otto,” he said to the heftier man next to him, “this kid is in a rush to nowhere. She isn’t even close to a clue as to where she’s going. If this is all she got planned, she woulda been a whole lot better off just staying in the damn room.”

  “Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not,” Otto said. “Either way, we stay on her. We lose this kid, our wives get to go to two funerals next week.”

  The tall man slid the newspaper onto the counter and started to walk after the girl, Otto by his side. “You’d think, though, by now anyway, somebody would have made a move to help this kid,” he said in a low voice. “If for nothing else, to show her they at least cared.”

  “It hasn’t been that long—a couple of days, tops,” Otto said. “These things take time to play themselves out. But then none of that should even be of any concern to you. What you have to be worried about is to see the move coming and be ready to jump when it does.”

  “Think it’ll be from the cop?” the tall man asked, easing past a mother and her young daughter, their arms filled with packages, both rushing for a departing Westchester train. “Or a face we don’t know?”

  “Doesn’t matter who moves, Freddie,” Otto said, keeping his gaze focused on Paula as she walked past a bookstore display. “What matters is that we nail his ass before his hands touch the girl.”

  “Looks from here like she’s headed for a meal,” Freddie said, brushing off the bump he felt from a passing businessman in a tailor-made suit.

  “About damn time,” Otto said. “I could use a slice, too.” Then, watching as his target veered to the right, “But I think she’s making a pit stop first.”

  Paula let the cold water run over her hands. She stared at her face in the stained mirror. Her long hair was greasy and in need of a combing, her eyes puffy from days of fitful bouts of little sleep. She cupped her hands, lowered her head, and splashed the icy water on her face and forehead. She repeated the gesture several times, not noticing the man standing in the last stall, his eyes focused on the closed door. He watched as an elderly woman in a tan jacket dried her hands, tossed two paper towels into an overstuffed bin, picked up her small valise, and left the bathroom. The man then eased his way out of the stall and walked toward the girl, who was still bent over the sink, splashing cold water on her face. He put a hand on the center of the girl’s back, freezing her in place. Her body was as still as stone, running water the only noise in the bathroom.

  “How do you like New York so far?” the man asked the girl, smiling at her in the mirror.

  Paula looked up. Her face exploded into a smile and she turned and rushed to hug the man. “Zio,” she whispered, holding him tight enough to feel both his muscles and the muzzle of his gun. “I knew you’d show up. I didn’t know where or how, but I just knew you’d find me.”

  The man gently kissed the top of the girl’s head and lifted her face up toward his, gazing into her clear, innocent eyes. “I’d have to die not to find you,” Lo Manto said, smiling at his niece.

  “I can’t wait until I take a shower,” Paula said. “And after that, I’m going to eat the biggest meal you’ve ever seen.”

  Lo Manto looked away from his niece and glanced at the closed door. “That’s going to have to wait a bit,” he said. “There are still a few things I need to finish, and I can’t get it all done without your help.”

  “Uncle Gianni, please,” Paula said with full teenage frustration. “You’ve done your job. You rescued me. You’re here and I’m safe. There’s nothing left for you to do. Except get me to a shower and then take me to lunch.”

  Lo Manto heard the door handle turn. He grabbed Paula and pulled her into the first open stall. He closed the door, snapped the lock, and jumped onto the toilet seat, crouching so as not to be seen by the middle-aged woman who had just entered. He signaled his niece to stay silent. They both relaxed as they listened to the clacking of the woman’s pumps as she entered the stall nearest the far wall and closed its door. Paula took a deep breath and turned to face her uncle. He was crouched on the toilet, his eyes trained on the floor, where the tips of a pair of men’s loafers were visible. She saw her uncle effortlessly move his right hand under his jacket and pull out his gun.

  The man must have stepped to the sink, because they could hear water running. Lo Manto pointed to Paula and gestured for her to open the stall a few inches and step out. Before she could move, the middle-aged woman came out of the last stall. “What are you doing in here?” she asked the man, her tone angry but her manner calm. “This is the ladies’ room.”

  “I know,” Freddie said. He was polite but to the point. “The men’s room is flooded. Guy outside said I could wash up in here. Said this was empty.”

  “He was wrong,” the woman said, stepping to the base of the sink.

  “I see that now,” the man said. “I’ll get out of your way.”

  Lo Manto nudged Paula forward and unlatched the door. He moved off the toilet seat and drifted with the shadow of the door, his feet against the base of the bowl, his back arched between stall and wall. Paula walked out slowly, staring at the man and talking to the woman. “What’s he doing in here?” she asked.

  Freddie held up one hand against both ladies. “Relax, you two,” he said. “I made a mistake. And now I’ll fix it all by leaving.”

  Freddie stared at Paula, looked at the empty stall behind her, and gave a quick glance at the woman by the sink. He bowed his head, a curt smile on his face, then turned and walked out of the restroom. The woman turned to Paula as soon as he left, talking to her as she dried off her hands with a sheaf of brown paper towels. “Don’t dawdle in here,” she said. “He might be back. In fact, more than likely, he will be. That’s what guys like him do. If one of us was in here alone, it might not have ended the way it did.”

  “Don’t worry,” Paula told her. “I’ll be out in less than a minute.”

  Lo Manto stepped out of the stall just as the restroom door closed behind the woman. Paula turned and glared at him. “Can we get out of here now?” she asked.

  “Listen to me, cara,” Lo Manto said, both hands gently grasping his niece’s shoulders. “That man who was just in here is one of the two following you, keeping you safe until you lead them to me.”

  “And what happens then?”

  “They’ll make their move and try to kill me,” Lo Manto said. “Which is exactly what I want them to do.”

  “Why?” Paula asked. “We’re here together now. We can just leave. The two of us. I lost them in the bathroom, we can easily lose them in a crowd. You don’t have to fight them anymore. Let it come to an end. Before one of them does kill you.”

  “These thing
s don’t just end with someone walking away,” Lo Manto said. “Too much blood has been spilled for that to happen now. I’m too close. They know it. And I know it.”

  Paula stared into her uncle’s eyes. She had heard all the stories about him, beginning when she was just old enough to walk. She later added a dose of reality to those sagas by reading through the scrapbook of his police exploits that her mother kept. Even at her tender age, she knew her uncle as a determined man, absorbed by his quest to clear the streets of Naples of the blight caused by the Camorra. Her mother thought Lo Manto the saddest man she’d ever known. In Paula’s eyes, he was the bravest, a lone hero waging a battle against a force superior in strength and coated in brutality and deception. She knew he would give his life for her without an instant of hesitation and would kill anyone who even threatened to do her harm.

  But she knew more about him than his crusade against the Camorra. He was the uncle who showed up the day after Christmas, with a car crammed with gifts and a warm, easy-to-forgive smile. He was the one who sent her a birthday present a month after the day and who had dressed as a hospital orderly to be the first to see her open her eyes after she got out of emergency surgery. He took her to old movies, exposing her to the neorealism of Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, and a young Federico Fellini. He took her to outdoor productions of Italian classics and was also first on line with her in the summer, both eager to see the latest silliness from the comic westerns of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. He took her ice skating, bought her CDs of the hottest groups, both American and Italian, and walked with her through the corridors of every museum in Naples, sharing his knowledge of the works on display and the lives of the men whose magical brushes created them.

  He was an important part of her young life and she would do anything not to lose him. And now, here, in a urine-streaked bathroom in the bowels of Grand Central Terminal, he stood in front of her and asked for help.